Christopher Shannon

The Christopher Shannon collection you didn't see this afternoon had something or other to do with Mexico. "But I've never been to Mexico," Shannon said just before the show today, "and it's nothing to me." So he scrapped it and looked to an inspiration more personal: the club landscape of the north of England during the late nineties, when he began escaping teenage drudgery through parties. "As soon as I discovered clubs, I didn't go to school anymore," he said.

Channeling the wild excess of party culture, and the defiantly unnatural clothing that was its unofficial costume, was a way back to an earlier era for Shannon. "I got into Central Saint Martins and got very serious and forgot that I'd ever been ridiculous," he said. Returning to his clubbing days in a spirit of glittery-haired celebration, he added, "felt very personal to me."

Shannon's shows are personal. He styles them himself; he casts them himself. He expresses surprise that any designer wouldn't do it that way. It's a risky proposition, but his instincts are good. His clothes are genuinely salable; even the new materials his club inspiration licensed, like PVC, rubber, and vinyl, didn't lead him too far afield from the realms of the wearable. While many around him whirl into oddity (and its frequent attendant, obscurity), Shannon's feet stay on the ground. But as he proved here, that doesn't mean they can't move to the beat.